I’ve watched some playthroughs of Monster and it looks great (and is largely devoid of the well dodgy sexual content Kingdom Death is famed for in modelling circles, so you can play it with your friends and they won’t think you’re weird)

The Diana Jones Award is an annual award for "excellence in gaming". The award is unusual in two ways: first, it is not an award for a specific class of thing, but can be awarded to a person, product, publication, company, organization, event or trend – anything related to gaming; second, it does not count popularity or commercial success as a sign of "excellence". The award was first presented in 2001. Nominees are circulated during the year to the committee, which is mostly anonymous but which ...

And no, I’m not just saying that because I’m involved in one of the cons that won it in 2006…

It’s a game we designed ourselves, based on the television series of the same name. Portrayed on the cover are the actors (and actress) we have chosen to “play” our characters.

At the bottom is the team leader, a character based on Vladimir Putin. In game he’s called Sergei Bogdanov, and he is a tank. Best character in years, sadly not seeing play this weekend due to his player non-presence around the table.

A bit different play this year. Not playing the contemporary setting, but instead an ad hoc special operations unit during the second boer war.

My character recently fell off a mountain in to a river only to come back to the field hospital under his command to find his entire supply of morphine (to which he is desperately addicted) blown up by artillery.

Love Letter is ace, though I prefer the Archer version - the rules mix things up better and the score pieces are Pam’s dolphin glove puppet. I have the original version but if I was going to buy a second one it’d be the Archer one.

I have heard great things about Robinson Crusoe and even better things about the 2nd edition.

I just got home from an evening of games with my board game designer friend. We played Terraforming Mars, his new favourite games (replacing Race for the Galaxy).

It certainly lives up to the hype & praise that has been surrounding it. What makes it so great is that it is actually a really simple game to teach and to play. All of the cards are clear and within a few turns you know exactly what to do.

There is a new player set up but we went straight into the more advanced version in which each player corporation differs in the starting resources and bonus actions. The game was close throughout but I managed to win by four points 97-93.

Got my morphine game back on track after the siege was lifted. Currently heading for China to relieve the europeans suffering from the boxer rebellion. I also met Cecil Rhodes an invested all my money with him.

I enjoyed Terraforming Mars so much that I decided to have a look at prices. Amazon currently have it for £65 which is unbelievable, the next price I found was £51 which is also more than I am willing to spend on a game currently.